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Aaron Henrickson will back at Brightside Theatre directing Ken Ludwig’s Moon Over Buffalo for their upcoming 2016 – 2017 season!

Moon Over Buffalo
March 10-26, 2017 (Fridays & Saturdays at 8 pm/Sundays at 3 pm)
Theatre at Meiley-Swallow Hall at North Central College
written by Ken Ludwig
directed by Aaron Henrickson

From the mind of Ken Ludwig (writer of Lend Me a Tenor) comes the classic Broadway comedy Moon Over Buffalo, a play that centers on the husband and wife acting team, George and Charlotte Hay -two fading stars of the 1950’s. In an attempt to keep their careers afloat, the couple is producing two plays simultaneously: Noel Coward’s Private Lives and Cyrano de Bergerac. Suddenly, George receives word that Hollywood director Frank Capra may be coming to see a matinee performance, giving them one last chance at fame! That is, of course, if they can remember what play they are doing. In short, everything that could go wrong does in this side-splitting, backstage farce full of romance, swordplay, prosthetic noses, and plenty of doors.

RECOMMENDED
“…a focused production, restrained to a handful of scenes backed by a continuous soundscape… Tympanic maintains precise control of Sandalwood’s strangeness ”

-Kevin Thomas, Time Out Chicago

RECOMMENDED
“…Director Aaron Henrickson’s staging makes the most of the small side project stage; his use of Dustin Pettigrew’s Western exoskeleton set is inventive.”

-Lisa Buscani, NewCity Chicago

RECOMMENDED
“I left the theater more than a bit unsettled…The staging of Sandalwood is good and Dustin Pettigrew’s set is wonderfully claustrophobic in portraying the open and empty Wild West… It’s an interesting and sometimes chilling 80 minutes. I have to give credit to Caffrey for creating a story that has room for dissection”

“If you think Neil LaBute puts only broad, deliberately provocative acts of cruelty onstage, check out this fragile, achingly intimate 2004 work. In seven short two-person plays, each taking place in a car, he investigates moments of harrowing revelation: a freshly detoxed woman calculatedly admitting to her mother she “can’t wait” to use again, a wife hinting to her husband that her reported sexual assault was consensual, a teacher asking to stroke his 15-year-old student’s hair while she naps. When LaBute’s characters aren’t aggressively suppressing their anguish, they’re nurturing it for selfish ends. It’s a psychologically complex evening, and director Aaron Henrickson’s discriminating, understated cast tease out every nuance. Nearly everything in this two-hour Fairlane Theatre production falls gracefully in place.”